I keep getting messages from MyHeritage.com, saying that there are SmartMatches for my family tree, or that various people want access to my tree.

When I go to their site, however, I cannot do anything about these, because I get this message:

Your family tree has 10,592 people. This exceeds the Basic subscription plan of your family site.

In order for your family tree to display all people, you must upgrade the site plan.

We have an Easter special: 30% discount on our Premium plan! But hurry up, this offer expires very soon.

Now I never subscribed to their site, with a basic plan or any other. I did not enter those 10 592 people on their site, so if it “exceeds” their basic plan, that is their problem, not mine.

They never asked me for my permission to put my data on their site, yet they seem to have done so, and now want me to pay them to have access to my own data, and to respond to the 19 other people who have asked my permission to access it because they think it matches something in their family tree.

When they sent me a message to say that they had created a family tree site for me on MyHeritage, this is what they said:

This family site is free, now and in the future.
Only YOU can access it, using the username and password above, or any
members that you will choose to invite to it after logging on. Please
visit the site and take advantage of its many features – immersive
family tree, online photo albums, rich event calendar, Smart Matching
technology, support for 15 languages, and more.

There seems to be something unethical about this whole operation, in fact it seems to be yet another genealogy scam.

They took my data without asking me.

They created a site without asking me.

They promised that it would be FREE – “now and in the future”

… and now they want me to pay to access it, or to give other people access to it!!